This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

Scholarship vs. a study for Ratner: the contradictions of Professor Zimbalist

Andrew Zimbalist is one of the country's leading sports economists, but his performance is far less credible when it comes to paid work for Forest City Ratner, where he seems to be contradicting himself.

As a benchmark, consider an excerpt (below) from the essay "Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Real Connection," which he co-authored with Roger G. Noll.

Zimbalist and Noll wrote that "promotional studies" often introduce faulty assumptions, such as that "a stadium does not impose additional, security, infrastructural, or environmental costs on the city."(Emphasis added)

He asserts his work is credible:Supporters of sports facilities invariably have produced reports from hired guns that claim handsome economic benefits. In my view, these reports are performed with a faulty methodology and make unrealistic assumptions.

But consider this passage:FCRC has made an initial estimate of the city’s operating expenses at Atlantic Yards. Based on conversations with former budget officials, FCRC concludes that the increment in fire and police budgets would be negligible.(Emphasis added)

However, the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO), in its September 2005 Fiscal Brief, estimated annual police overtime costs of $1.7 million for 45 Nets games and suggested additional costs for other events.

Maybe that's not too much in terms of the overall budget, but the willingness to ignore such numbers is, according to Zimbalist the scholar, a hallmark of "promotional" budgets.

An independent expert?

I've commented that Zimbalist didn't even put the statement in his own words and wondered if he believed it. The AtlanticYards.com web site describes Zimbalist as "an independent expert." In this case, the evidence suggests his expertise was compromised by a lack of independence.

In May 2004, Forest City Ratner executive Jim Stuckey told (p. 122-23) the City Council that the developer was not responsible for the study:It is actually Andy Zimbalist’s report. And I should make that clear because we retained Professor Zimbalist because we wanted somebody who historically have [sic] been against doing arenas and stadium [sic], because it was our view that we wanted to get the honest answers about this project. Not that we wanted to just hire a consultant who would sweep something under a rug, or who would just give us the answer that they expected us to hear.... So let’s just start with that from the beginning. It is really not our report, it is Professor Zimbalist’s report.[Errors in the transcript are probably those of the transcriber.]

Stuckey’s claim, however, was undermined by Zimbalist’s acknowledgment that he relied on information supplied by the developer:Many of the numbers used in this report concerning Nets attendance, ticket prices, construction costs and other items come from projections done by or for FCRC. I have discussed these estimates with FCRC and they seem reasonable to me.

Did the numbers about security costs seem reasonable? How could Zimbalist write a "promotional report" when he knows better? It's brutally weird.

"Unlikely" speculations

Zimbalist wrote in his report:Although the MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] refers to the possibility of additional optional contributions from the city and state, it seems unlikely that such payments would be made and, in any case, it would be entirely speculative to assign a dollar figure to them.(Emphasis added)

Why did Zimbalist speculate that it "seems unlikely" that additional payments would be made?

Given that increase in the spending announced in the MOU, it now "seems unlikely" that additional payments would not be made. Zimbalist appears to have embraced the "unrealistic assumptions" he criticizes in others' studies.

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Pacific Park Brooklyn is seriously delayed, Forest City Realty Trust said yesterday in a news release, which further acknowledged that the project has caused a $300 million impairment, or write-down of the asset, as the expected revenues no longer exceed the carrying cost.

The Cleveland-based developer, parent of Brooklyn-based Forest City Ratner, which is a 30% investor in Pacific Park along with 70% partner/overseer Greenland USA, blamed the "significant impairment" on an oversupply of market-rate apartments, the uncertain fate of the 421-a tax break, and a continued increase in construction costs.

While the delay essentially confirms the obvious, given that two major buildings have not launched despite plans to do so, it raises significant questions about the future of the project, including:if market-rate construction is delayed, will the affordable h…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …

As I've written, Mayor Bill de Blasio sure knows how to steer and spin coverage of his affordable housing initiatives.

Indeed, his latest announcement, claiming significant progress, came with a pre-press release op-ed in the New York Daily News and then a friendly photo-op press conference with an understandably grateful--and very lucky--winner of an affordable housing lottery.

To me, though, the most significant quote came from Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, who, as the Wall Street Journal reported:
said public housing had been “starved” of federal support for years now, leaving the city with fewer ways of creating affordable housing. “Are we relying too heavily on the private sector?” she said. “There is no alternative.”
Though Glen was using what she surely sees as a common-sense phrase, it recalls the slogan of a politician with whom I doubt de Blasio identifies: former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative who believed in free markets.